Sacha Baron Cohen, the British comedian who outraged America with Borat and Brüno, has upset some more people: the families of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman.
The Ali G star paid disgraced Heisman Trophy winner and NFL Hall of Fame running back O.J. Simpson $20,000 to appear in his next movie, according to The Daily Mail.
An unnamed source told The Daily Mail that “Baron Cohen wore a curly dark wig and black, thick-rimmed glasses to meet Simpson in a Las Vegas hotel room.”
“OJ would not even get in the hotel room until he was paid a sackload of cash,” the source said. “There was no way Sacha could have got OJ into the room without paying money.”
Brown’s sister Tanya is outraged, saying in a statement, “Nicole and Ron are two human beings who were brutally murdered. This is not a joke nor is it entertainment. If Sacha makes this a comedic effort his victims will be personified as a joke.”
O.J. Simpson was acquitted of the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman in 1995 but was later found liable of their deaths in 1997 and was ordered to pay the families $33.5 million, much of which still has not yet been paid,
Simpson was later sentenced to nine years in prison for his role in a 2007 armed robbery in Las Vegas. He was released in October.
Sacha Baron Cohen he yet to comment on the rumor, but The Daily Mail caught up with Simpson at a wine bar in Las Vegas and asked him about Baron Cohen
“I know him well. I met him,” Simpson told a reporter. “Nice guy.”
It won’t be Simpson’s first time on the big screen. Before he was the most hated man in America, he enjoyed a successful acting career and notably had a role in the 1988 comedy The Naked Gun and its 1991 sequel The Smell of Fear.